It looks as if dollar stores are a black hole that eats up revenue and produces little profit. Or at least that is what Walmart has concluded; it is concentrating its small box growth on Neighborhood Markets that generate several streams of revenue. Most neighborhood markets contain a grocery store and a pharmacy as well as a discount store, and many of them also have gas pumps.

The 2016 holidays and the free shipping offers may prove whether Target and Best Buy are going to be major players in the world of online retail or not. One just hopes that management teams are not betting the company on such offers. If they are, the death spiral could be closer than we think, especially for Target.

If you want to take a gamble on a tech company that could be the next Google, PayPal could be it. PayPal’s revenue was growing at a rate of 14% in the first quarter of 2015. PayPal’s international revenue grew at a rate of 52% in 2014, the volume of mobile payments it processed grew by 58% and its total payment volume grew by 26%.

More likely, buyers for the A&P locations include Walmart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT), which is expanding the number of smaller locations it operates, and Target (NYSE: TGT), which is considering entering the small-box arena. Also likely to jump in is the fast-growing, privately-held Aldi Inc., which is aggressively expanding its discount grocery business in the United States. Aldi owns another fast-growing grocer: Trader Joe’s.

It looks as if basic retail and our economy could be in serious trouble. The present economic policies in the United States are not looking good and need to be changed now before we see large-scale collapse in many sectors.

If Holley is correct, Walmart.com’s revenues could exceed those of Alibaba. Walmart could be making more money from its online operations than Alibaba is. It is hard to tell because Walmart does not release detailed information about its online sales.

This could make Walmart an excellent value play in online retail because its stock was trading at $73.87 (€66.93) a share on July 13, 2015. Walmart has been investing heavily in online retail for some time.